You may remember our interview with Markus Fischer, head of Festo's Bionic Learning Network earlier this year. The German industrial control and automation company has now released a video of an autonomous kite, which showcases some of Festo's advanced mechatronic actuators and control systems. The kite has a bionic wing filled with an aerostatic lifting gas and is engineered to autonomously and intelligently cope with strong and turbulent wind conditions, with the ground station's servomotors periodically switch to generator mode to recover energy from the steering motion. Any excess energy from the kite's compliant guy-ropes is redirected to batteries, making this a truly autonomous kite.